Tuesday Two-fer -- Agatha Christie's Crooked House & Kate Young's Reading Between the Crimes (Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday)

Today's a bit unusual as I have two books for my Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday. I started with Reading Between the Crimes, which is the second in Kate Young's Jane Doe Book Club series. My copy came from NetGalley thanks to Crooked Lane Books ... but after falling in love with the first one in the series, I would have gotten it anyway.

At the beginning of the second chapter the book club started to discuss their current read -- Agatha Christie's Crooked House. Somehow it was still on my ever-expanding TBR so I immediately grabbed a copy and read with great delight so as to not have the book club spoil anything for me.

I am ridiculously glad that I did.

I know. I'm a dork. We've been over this before at least a couple of times.

Of course, I couldn't read both without teasing both so there we have it. A Tuesday Two-fer. "First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is from the first paragraph or two of a book being read now (or in the future) and is hosted by Socrates' Book Reviews. "Teaser Tuesday" at The Purple Booker asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read.

You could, I suppose, read one without the other. I wouldn't, though. Crooked House ties heavily into Reading Between the Crimes. Even if it didn't, why would you not take the excuse to read another book? I am more than okay with any excuse to read more -- especially when the "more" involved is Agatha Christie.

Crooked House was one of Christie's personal favorites and I absolutely feel that oozing through the words and pages. There is no Poirot or Marple or any of the other usuals. Charles has returned from duty during World War II with every intention of marrying his sweetheart Sophia. She wont' agree to anything of the sort because her eccentric and extremely wealthy and rather unscrupulous grandfather had just been murdered and there's the dark "whodunnit" cloud hanging over her family -- a very odd family who all live together at his very odd estate that's more like multiple houses mish-mashed together into one "crooked house" -- just like the nursery rhyme.

There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all liv'd together in a little crooked house.

Through his father, Charles has ties to Scotland Yard and decides to help solve the case so he and Sophia can live happily ever after. Of course, it isn't easy because everyone seems to have the means and motive ... and at the same time, no one seems to have the means and motive.

It's brilliant, of course, because it's Christie. I absolutely see why it was one of her favorites -- and well-loved by the Jane Doe Book Club. 

(See what I did there? Nice segue, eh?)

On the surface, the Jane Doe Book Club series might look and sound like a typical cozy. I knew not far into the first one that this is definitely not the case. It's cozy and suspense and psychological thriller all mish-mashed together ... kind of like the crooked house. I loved the first book -- On Borrowed Crime. The main character in the series is Lyla Moody. Lyla works for her private investigator uncle, has an ex-boyfriend who happens to be the Chief of Police, a current boyfriend who happens to be a Special Agent, a tight-knit group of friends who are also fans of mystery books and true-crime tales, and gets caught up under a very similiar dark "whodunnit" cloud when the husband of book club member and dear friend, Harper, is found murdered in the library of Lyla's family home.

There are many similarities between this case and the case in Crooked House, so Lyla (and her friends) use the book as a sort of guide to help them help Harper. Hence, my whole read them both (with Agatha first) plea. It's for your own good. And, again, why would you not take the excuse to read another book?